Helicopter & Ancient Agriculture
Last year, in an early morning walk among the rice fields of rural Japan, I heard the rapid yet subdued thwap-thwap-thwap of a very small helicopter. The civilian machine swayed slowly forth & back over the fields, spreading fertilizer or pesticide or glitter or something. It was cool, and an excellent Japananification.*

Dorky White Guy Sold Separately

So… that machine, what do you call it? It wasn’t autonomous, and it wasn’t delivering Hellfire missiles, but it was delivering something in response to remote commands, in this case from an old farmer in huge rubber boots thumbing a bulky remote.

So was it a drone?
Or was it a robot?
Or a robot drone?
A farming toy?

The Nomenclature Problem
To the military, aircraft that do not require direct, physical human control are known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). Ocasionally, they’ll use the word drone, too.

In civilian discourse, the lack of a naming protocol is somewhat problematic. Now, obviously “UAV Conducts Successful Mission” isn’t going to get the pageviews of “Killer Robot Drone Delivers Fiery Death from Above,” but going all dramatic like that, with those words, is kinda disingenuous and a little irresponsible. See, Reapers and Predators and the like aren’t robots, they’re super-tech R/C planes with some nice autopilot and guns & missiles, right? So that makes them simply drones, yeah?

Well, robot drone is sexier, even a bit menacing, and gets attention:____________

Here’s the thing: the words are all wrong, but nobody knows what’s right.

When is a Drone a Robot and a Robot a Drone or Both or Huh?A drone is under control, so does a machine become a robot if it has a measure of autonomy? Does the label also depend on function, manner of movement, or distance from the controller? Are Google’s self-driving carsdrones or robots? Čapek’s robots were all humanoid, so does form also have some bearing? And what of artificial or non-biological intelligence – how does that fit in? At the end of the day, until we have a standardized system, isn’t the robot label just a flavor enhancer?

No one’s bothered to codify or standardize the lingo, but clearly we’re already operating on some subliminal guidelines. Garbage trucks and 10-story mechanical parking garages are partially autonomous, and the mini J-copter from my morning stroll is a UAV, but we can all agree that none of these would be called drones or robots or robot drones.

And now, with a booming domestic market, maybe it’s time to figure this out.

Drones are Coming Home in a Big Way – Let’s Name ThemAt the moment, most citizens know two basic things about drones that fly:

This One Brings Honey.

This One Brings Death. Or Just Watches You. Maybe Both.

Due in large part to the U.S. military’s growing enthusiasm for sending machines instead of pilots or soldiers to its many playgrounds, there’s a growing awareness of active and in-development combat & surveillance drones, super-secret spaceplanes, and various other force-related telepresence devices.

The month of June saw a certain topical convergence on the domestic side of drone use (as with robot sex technology in April). People are getting more hip to the issue, and the growing awareness is not just among us technodorks; mainstream media coverage in general is up. In addition to the military flavor, everyday people are learning about domestic law enforcement drones, border drones, Apple & Google mapping drones, and also those that assist firefighters and monitor agricultural stuff. (see Wired’s July cover story)

Time to Worry about Domestic Drones?
It’s too early to parse the pros and cons of drone proliferation at home, but since the machines are already here, and lots more are coming, accurate terminology is essential. Polls do show increasing concern, and the implicit meaning of the words drone, or robot, or robot drone, or M.A.R.K.-13 Population Control Deathbot, etc., will further shape public opinion, understanding, and policy. We should prepare ourselves with an understanding of and ability to differentiate between drone and robot function, and thereby limit, or, if shit goes all SkyNet, amplify the technophobic freak out.

Futurists, those in the technology writing/commentary business, even those of us with questionable journalistic qualification or capability (as if that’s a pre-req for a media gig – HA!), we have a responsibility to communicate appropriate terminology. So let’s do that, work to inform the public, and begin providing a kind of identity to the machines. For now, how about dropping robot from descriptions of military and domestic drones? Robots will appreciate it when they wake up.

It’s the right thing to do for society.
Because you know what happens when something self-aware lacks identity?
White people with dreadlocks, that’s what.

_
*Japanification, N. [Japanify, V.] The unstoppable, BORG-like capability of the Japanese psyche to reach out into the universe, inhale whatever interesting cultural or technological nuggets are found, and own them so hard that even the Japanese are oblivious to their unoriginality. The products of this process are often pelleted back into the global media stream, and, inexplicably, 1.9% of humanity’s population becomes a throbbing pillar of global pop culture. This is the single most powerful macro-cultural superpower in the history of the human species.-Anthrobotic’s 2012 Dictionary of Useful Terms According to Reno_

This RX-78-2 Gundam model is huge and imposing and badass, and while Anthrobotic does not necessarily endorse the consumption of anime, Anthrobotic endorses the shit outta visiting Tokyo Bay to get some 60-foot-tall robot in your life.

This week it’s the JTFFS talking about makeup and beauty products and the one thing Whitey’s got plenty of which is not a balanced diet or regular exercise or a positive residual self image, but skin tone! And then it gets sleepy weird…

This week we find out that Apple is likely to invest in Japan Display, the bastard child of Sony’s, Toshiba’s, and Hitachi’s floppy failed display businesses that, post-amputation, did a Wonder Triplets: ACTIVATE! move into profitability, and, entirely kinda unrelated, the de-displayed Hitachi has unveiled the world’s most powerful microscope and Sony’s commissioned it to look for their fiscal 2014 profit margin!

Next to Team SCHAFT’s new Google overlords withdrawing them from further competition, the poor showing of NASA’s Valkyrie robot might have seemed the DRC Trials’s biggest disappointment, but it’s nowhere near that simple: NASA JSC and the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) are keeping the flame alive, and by flame we’re talking like…nuclear blow-torch.

This week we just kinda make fun of the Hollywood Reporter for not mentioning Transformers when they totally should and Epson is getting into the fashion printing business because they finally realized that nobody prints on paper anymore.

Talking about machine morality is basically picking apart whether or not we’ll someday have to be nice to self-aware machines or demand that they be nice to us. Impossible? No, stupid. Guaranteed? No, stupid. Good idea to be prepared just in case? Damn right.

This week Hitachi is finally ready to send its snake/crawler hybrid robot into the heart of Fukushima Daiichi’s severely melted-down reactor #1, and a Japanese booze maker that owns an American booze maker wants to get cozier and it’s kind of funny.

This week it appears that Kyocera is (allegedly) thriving in the UK printer market (paper, not 3D), and Toyota has decided that racin’ and jumpin’ and stuff is good for business after all. COME ONE AND ALL AND READ THE GODDAMN JTFF!

We want look to the future with hope, we long for new ideas and new developments, but that dream is stuck in neutral. We have no meaningful common rallying point. Collectively, the global zeitgeist’s most anticipated technological event is Tim Cook, 10:00am, PST. And holy shit is that sad.

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